The Cliff Walk at Pourville
The canvas was inspired by an extended stay at Pourville in 1882. Monet settled in the village between February and mid-April, during which time he wrote to his future wife, Alice Hoschedé, "How beautiful the countryside is becoming, and what joy it would be for me to show you all its delightful nooks and crannies!" They returned in June of that year. The two young women standing atop the cliff may be Hoschedé's daughters, Marthe and Blanche; it has also been suggested that the figures represent Alice and Blanche, both of whom painted out of doors at that time.
The various elements of the painting are unified through brushwork; short, crisp strokes were used to paint the grasses of the cliff, the women's drapery and the distant sea. A sense of movement suggested by painterly calligraphy was a property of Monet's work in the 1880s, and is here used to connote the effect of a summer wind upon figures, land, water, and clouds moving across the sky. During the painting process, Monet reduced the size of a rocky promontory at far right, to better balance the composition's proportions; however, it's also been noted that this secondary cliff was a late addition to the canvas, and was not part of the original design. An X-ray of the painting indicates that the artist originally painted a third figure into the grouping, then removed it.